Some days you take out the trash, and some days the trash takes you out.

In the distant suburbs of Tokyo, two decidedly slackerish orange-suited fellows, one bald and one with a very bad Afro, have a—well, call it a failure to communicate with their boss at a fire-extinguisher factory and haul him off to the smoking garbage dump called Black Fuji. (It’s a geographical cousin of the mountain of garbage that dominates the landscape in Idiocracy, which belongs to a different film series entirely.) Strange things are afoot, or perhaps ahead, in the place, and the mountain begins to generate zombies at just about the time Fujio and Mitsuo arrive. Fujio may be dumber than a box of ramen, but he’s got a few developing skills in jujitsu. For his part, Mitsuo, a budding master of that martial art, is quite good at popping the heads off the zombies as if they’re Pez dispensers, and for a short time all is well.

Ah, but then comes that fork in the road and carnassial in the leg, and then Sakichi Sato‘s 2005 film Tokyo Zombie reveals its origins in manga comic-book culture. Just as it does, it borrows a lick from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (which belongs to another other film series entirely) and even, or so it seems to me, pays subtle homage to Juzo Itami’s great film Tampopo. (Slurp, slurp.) Who will prevail? “The mighty spirit of the rubbish,” as one seer puts it, looks to have the upper hand even with our heroes at work on either side of the human/zombie divide. Considering what civilization devolves to when push comes to shuffle, maybe the slow-moving ones deserve to take over the planet after all.

Can a zombie with dentures actually spread the virus? That’s the take-home question this terrific zomcom offers, and you’d better have the answer before the next zombie plague hits.